Change at the top

A cooler autumnal day after a cold night, but sunny despite the clouds. Clare went off to her study group after breakfast. I worked on next Sunday's sermons, and then completed this week's Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube. A surprise email arrived from the Diocese announcing the appointment of a new Dean of Llandaff, Richard Peers, sub Dean of Christchurch Oxford, plus a letter from Bishop June announcing her retirement in December.

I'm disappointed there wasn't a Church in Wales candidate to occupy the post. Too many positions in this diocese have been filled by Church of England clergy in recent years, and this is bad for the self-esteem and morale of long standing Welsh clergy in my opinion. Will the diocesan electoral college take note of such a concern when choosing an episcopal candidate/ Will the Bench of Bishops control the process and over-ride the diocesan electors' wishes, as happened last time around? Time will tell.

I cooked lunch ready for Clare's return, and after eating together went for a walk in the park. I bumped into Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomos on Llandaff Fields, returning from a meeting at the Cathedral. We stood and chatted about the news many many other things, for the best part of an hour, before continuing down to the river.

When I returned home, Clare had gone to her meditation group at six, so I ate supper alone, then watched a lovely documentary programme on More Four in a documentary series called 'Wondrous' Wales, giving different aspects of rural life - one was about hill farming in Carmarthenshire's Black Mountains, and the other was about a smallholder in the Brecon Beacons specialising in honey production. Then I watched two episodes of a new drama called 'Crossfire', a fine piece of drama about a murder spree by two disaffected young men in a Canary Island package holiday resort. It portrayed in detail the whole experience from the viewpoint of the many different victims caught up in the shooting. There's more to the story than that, but I'm keeping the final episode for another night.